I was watching Caleb Williams answer questions about his cleats when the marketer in me took over. He called them “super comfy.” He remembered the name of the studs. Then he explained what happens when he plants his foot hard on turf or grass: “they move when you move.” I’m a Bears fan, and here I was thinking about the people who sell shoes. Wow, this company just hit a gold mine.
Why I Would Have Offered to Pay the Fine
The NFL had fined Williams $11,941 for displaying the Caddix logo on game day. Caddix CEO Jack Rasmussen offered to cover the fine. By the time Williams spoke to reporters, I’d already seen people talking about the cleats all over my feed. Even if he’d never said another word about them, I think Rasmussen made the right call.
Think about it from the athlete’s side. You choose a pair of shoes for work. Wearing the company’s logo costs you almost $12,000. Now you get to see how the people whose name is on that shoe respond. Offering to pick up the bill gave Williams a reason to trust Caddix the next time he laced up. That alone would’ve been worth doing. And it was a real commitment. A second fine came in at $23,882.
The Words a Player Remembers
What gets me is how easily Williams went from talking about comfort to describing what the studs do. “SmartStuds” is a name a company can put on a box. “They move when you move” is the part a high school player can repeat to his dad on the ride home from practice.
That’s the kid I kept thinking about. He’s hoping to play in college. Somewhere else there’s a college player hoping to get drafted. Both know how quickly an injury can change those plans. If I’m that player, I want to hear what somebody who wears the cleats every week actually feels when he makes a hard cut.
Your customers have stories worth sharing. Let’s give them a reason to talk about your business.
The Answer That Made Me Believe Him
One of the most persuasive things Williams said came when a reporter asked whether the cleats had kept a hamstring injury from being worse. He couldn’t say. What he could say was that his feet, knees and ankles hadn’t bothered him as much in these cleats. That answer sounded like somebody comparing two pairs of shoes he’d played in. I believed him, including the part where he admitted what he didn’t know.
The Cleats Went All Black On Monday Night
When I caught up on Monday night’s Bears game in Seattle, I found myself looking at Caleb’s feet. He was still wearing Caddix, only this time the cleats were all black, with no visible logo. Caddix shared a SportsCenter clip of him warming up and added three words: “No logo necessary!”
By November 3, that one post had more than 9,000 likes and 229,000 views on X. What I love is that Caddix trusted people to get the joke. A week earlier, I’d have scrolled right past a clip of a quarterback warming up in plain black cleats. Now I’m checking to see which shoes he wore. That’s what the press conference did for this brand.
What This Looks Like Closer To Home
When clients tell me someone complimented the website I designed, my first instinct is to ask what the person said. Did they like how it looked? Did they finally find something they’d been looking for? I know what I was trying to accomplish with the design. The customer can tell me which part actually mattered.
I think about this with the dental practices I work with, too. A Google review is valuable. But say a patient goes home and posts on her own Facebook page about an appointment she’d been putting off. She mentions that the dentist sat down and explained what would happen before getting started. A friend who’s been putting off her own appointment reads that and asks, “Who do you go to?” Right there, that one detail can bring in a new patient.
My advice to a local business owner is pretty simple. The next time someone goes out of their way to tell you about a good experience, give them room to tell the story. If they’d like to share it with friends, encourage them. Let them pick the detail. I never would’ve guessed that the phrase I’d remember from an NFL press conference would be “super comfy.” Yet here I am, still talking about those cleats.
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